Taking the Plunge (video)

*FYI: I have no clue who big belly tattoo man is

How did you spent your New Year's morning? Hung over in bed? Making a hefty list of resolutions to run more miles and eat fewer Twinkies? Getting your Betty shaped and colored?

This morning I did something I've never done before. Something that involved paying money to be very cold and miserable for a short time. Kind of like how we pay money to run races and find ourselves puking, crapping, crying and in pain. We do these things for the experience. We do it to make memories. We do it because we want to test ourselves in new and different ways. We do it because life just wouldn't be that interesting if we didn't do these things. But, most of all we do these things to have something to blog about.

My adventure this morning was to do the infamous New Year's Day "Polar Bear Plunge" at the Boulder Reservoir. The details are simple.

1. Show up in 25 degree weather.
2. Pay a registration fee (which goes towards the Alzheimer's Society, so I'm down with that).
3. Get in a long line of people wearing bathrobes, bikinis, down coats, flip flops, tutus.
4. Wait for awhile in your Snuggie until you're so stinking cold your daughter is whining her brains out and your feet are so numbed out you are contemplating dumping your Swiss Miss hot chocolate on them just for a few seconds of relief (hell, covering your feet in boiling liquid sounds better at this point than the pain and cold you are feeling)
5. Observe the rescue divers get all outfitted and immersed in the 30 degree water in case someone goes into cardiac arrest. Hope it's not you who will need help.
6. Watch people bounding into the reservoir in groups of 20. Hear them screaming. See them unable to breathe.
7. Inch closer. Question why the eff you are doing this.
8. Take off all clothes but your bathing suit. Hope your 12 year old son who is plunging with you doesn't die.
9. Stand in the cold waiting for your cue to go.... (see me in purple bikini next to my son in the striped shorts)
   
   

Moments after emerging from this hell hole of freezing water (it is hard to explain just how cold it really was), Sam and I got in a luke warm and dirty hot tub. We didn't hang out long because I didn't want to start the new year with an STD. We be lined for our clothes and headed to the car. My feet were in bad shape = reynaud's syndrome and all:

The shivering didn't stop until I ingested one Grande Vanilla Latte and one huge bowl of steaming vegetable soup. All in all, some great mother/son bonding and the perfect way to jump start a new year of heart stopping adventures.